


Triggered Through The Looking Glass

by asparagusmama



Category: Lewis (TV)
Genre: CS Lewis's Narnia, Fantasy, Gen, Lewis Caroll's Wonderland, Literary References & Allusions, Or is it a dream, Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials, Prequel, mentions of child sexual abuse as triggered memories, mentions of child sexual abuse in a case
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-20
Updated: 2019-01-20
Packaged: 2019-10-13 01:14:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17478503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asparagusmama/pseuds/asparagusmama
Summary: James Hathaway does not fit, is not happy. He solved the case, but DI Knox took the credit, but desperate to fit in he goes drinking to celebrate both the closing of the case and the retirement of a colleague. But drinking and being teased and feeling lonely is never a good idea, particularly if a case has been triggery.He tries to distract himself when a white rabbit hops through his flat...





	Triggered Through The Looking Glass

James Hathaway stumbled as he made his way into his flat, tripping over his work shoes, and giggling inanely. He was drunk. So drunk. He'd been drinking since he'd finished work.

There was a word for what he felt, a word he was studiously ignoring. Or in fact, what he was indeed feeling.

The bastard had finally confessed, but now his lawyer was demanding psychiatric assessments, and would no doubt come up with the excuse he had some dreadfully abusive childhood and it all made sense.

Bollocks!

Absolute bollocks.

Those poor kids. How could his boss be so calm, so matter of fact, he had no idea. Mind you, sometimes he suspected Charles Knox was a sociopath!

Oh, he was making excuses.

He had to be sick! Right now!

Hathaway stayed in the bathroom a very long time, feeling the cold of the lino on his thigh and ankle through his cargos, his head thumping, the light too bright. Every time he closed his eyes he saw those little boys, dead, in Hobson's morgue. Tiny children, their lives snuffed out.

He retched again.

All three anally penetrated, Hobson said. Sodomised. Raped. Every tiny boy. Raped and then killed.

They were lucky.

Shut up!

The memories played, just behind his conscious mind, like a snuff movie, a horror movie, one that came with visceral sensation, a VR snuff... he had to keep that wall held, not let the dam burst, keep a lid on the box, not let them out, all the metaphors and similes he could choose.

He meant keep himself safe!

James let an unearthly wail that he had no idea he was capable off and smashed his forehead into the toilet bowl. He retched again, and then slid into blissful unconsciousness.

When he woke he was hit by such waves of uncontrollable and barely recognisable emotions, if he had a gun he would have gladly put it to his head just to stop the pain. Fortunately for him, the British Police were still mercifully unarmed. 

He felt fear, sheer naked terror, along with guilt, loneliness, and emptiness and loss. Such loss. Loss of innocence, loss of trust, loss of childhood. And guilt, should he have told, should he have said no, should he have known what was happening to him.

And the pain, oh the ghost pain he felt deep in his belly, in his anus, deep inside, as his body was raped by memory.

He had to get his head together, drinking to escape was obviously not the answer. He'd usually made better mistakes about when and where to drink. He guessed he wanted to be 'one of the boys' and not the 'holier than thou gay posh nob' of the team's teasing. Just has he had been in uniform. Although then it had been good-natured, and the word gay had never been used. He wasn't gay. Was he? He wasn't really attracted to women, however much he tried, but he was... scared of relations with men.

Besides it was a sin. A blessing. A call to the celebrate life, at least, his father-confessor at the Seminary had told him so. He'd also had to confess his life before being called to Christ when he entered, and somehow, what Mortmaigne had done to him again and again had become another sin to confess.

It wasn't his sin. It wasn't. And he wasn't at all sure being gay was such a sin either. Interestingly how when he read such verses now he thought they were talking about the exploitation of others, slaves, prostitutes, children – not two men engaging in loving or even lustful acts. All lust was a sin outside marriage, so that made being gay sinful de facto, as same sex marriage was not recognised by church or law.

Fractured, brain foggy, drunken theological and philosophical distractions were a good call. A sober, less exhausted James might remember a pithy quote or two to cheer himself up and justify his arguments to himself. Right now most of his conscious mind was battling with his subconscious to keep other, more personal, long term memories contained and held.

His therapist at Cambridge had wanted him to recover and examine every single memory, thought it was the way to recovery. He had blocked the memories at 12, when it stopped, not even consciously, his child-mind had just protected him. Memories and particularly guilt had surfaced more and more as puberty hit, which was why he'd laughed at poor Will, all he could think was Will wanting to do to him what Mortmaigne did, and that he might want it done to him, and that he could not allow or recognise, as what did that say about the past?

Forcing himself to remember and describe in detail to the therapist led to two suicide attempts, an overdose and slashed wrists. The counsellor he saw after that had been horrified at the forced remembrance, and said he might, one day, want to look, but taught him mediation and distraction. He went back to the church, did a lot of voluntary work, and acknowledged the previous call to the priesthood he had felt as a lonely if successful schoolboy.

He wasn't stupid, far from it, he knew he would have been awkward and strange even if he hadn't been abused. He self diagnosed himself both OCD and ASD years ago. Modern neuroscience was talking of childhood trauma re-writing the brain, so maybe he wouldn't have been.

Wouldn't have been stupid enough to drink that yard of ale to the drunken chants of the DCs and PCs. It had been his overnighter going through the witness statements and forensics that had led to the football coach for the Kirtlington Boys Club. This was his reward, strangely.

Plus, of course, old plodder DC Dixon was retiring, his last case solved (by shiny fast track DS Hathaway) and he had dared him to do it.

For a moment he had felt a sense of brethren with his fellow officers, and then he had said something – did he quote the Bible or some poetry or piece of literature, he couldn't remember now, but then they were laughing at him again, so he'd switched to Scotch. Doubles. 

Distraction.

He clutched his stomach and whimpered a little as it burned with remembered pain,or psychosomatic pain. Who knew?

He smelt awful, two full days' sweat from his not going home or sleeping last night, plus beer and vomit. He needed to shower. Or bathe. But the thought of being naked left him feeling absolute terror. He was so disgusting and dirty.

“Oh man up Hathaway, you pathetic wimp!” he snapped at himself, and stood up and started to run a bath. He added bubbles, then randomly, without thinking, toilet cleaner and bleach, to wash away the stains of Mortmaigne.

He fell asleep in the bath, and woke cold with skin itching and burning, so showered as the bath drained around his feet. He stepped out and wrapped the towel around him, shivering. Like so many old Edwardian and Victorian converted multi occupancy, his bathroom had mould and no heating, and however hard he cleaned, it smelt. The mould and vomit seemed stronger than his shower gel, toilet cleaner, and even bleach. He retched again, but swallowed the vomit and left the bathroom to go to his bedroom. His body was still remembering in waves of stabbing pains in the abdomen and pulsing, rhythmic thrusts of ghost pain of rape.

He'd not experienced such vivid flashbacks since the weeks before he left the Seminary. He was not in a good place then.

He pulled on some comfy lounge pants and a baggy tee shirt, then pulled on fluffy purple socks and a baggy fisherman knit jumper. Dad had bought him that sweater, trying to get him to go fishing with him, or even a long walk. His Dad used to try to make amends, take back the blame he laid at him for his mother's death, the guilt for not realising sooner.

But he was the one who was guilty, not Dad. Not really. They lived in different world, where the land, the woods, and the rivers, were his Dad's, where the landscape of words and ideas and music were his. He had been so mean to his mother, and the blame was his, he put up with the abuse, he didn't want his Dad sacked, he didn't want to be homeless, he didn't want to lose that scholarship to prep school, he was too afraid of being blamed.

One afternoon in the Summerhouse of a beginning of an beginning of a plan of being groomed and Nell had been straight to her teacher the next day.

Perhaps he was harsh, a lot happened in the seven years that separated their being five, including Childline and awareness classes with children about 'saying no' and 'who can touch your body'.

They protected his sister, they didn't protect him. He hated himself for being jealous. They didn't know, and it would have killed him to know his sister had gone through what he did.

But then they still didn't believe him. He supposed, maybe bisexual paedophiles were rare, so why should they? They thought he was the jealous one!

Then his mother did believe him, and her guilt cost her her life. She said so in her note.

The childish, unearthly wail escaped again, and he caught himself putting his hands over his ears, just to shut his thoughts.

Busy. He needed to be busy.

He went into the kitchenette and began to clean furiously.

He'd been at his early hours spring cleaning some time when, over the breakfast bar, he saw a small white rabbit wearing a waistcoat and a pocket watch hop across the carpet of his living room area.

He peeled off his marigold gloves and threw them and the cloth into the sink and walked around the the breakfast bar that separated the kitchenette from the tiny living room. The rabbit stopped, scratched its ear and thumped the ground, looking at him. But it did not speak. Hathaway rubbed at his eyes and stared back, waiting. He must be hallucinating. He half-expected, wanted, the rabbit to say something about being late, but it just twitched his nose at him and looked at him intently with almond shaped rabbit eyes. There was nothing anthropomorphic about this rabbit, it was normal rabbit size, it just wore a tiny sleeveless jacket more like something made by Beatrix Potter than any illustration from the Alice books it referenced with its teeny little pocket watch hung around its neck.

Seemingly satisfied it had James's attention, the rabbit hopped out of the room, across the tiny hall and into his bedroom. As in a dream, burning with curiosity and fear for his sanity, James followed. The rabbit crossed the room and went up to his full length mirror. It turned once, twitched its nose and ear at James, the jumped at the glass. Without thinking, James leapt forwards, to stop the creature hurting itself he told himself, and found himself sucked through the glass and fall through a vortex, swirls and patterns around him as if he were inside a mandala, and then falling, falling, passing clocks and tree roots and random religious and mathematical symbols.

He landed on his knees, unhurt, in a small room. He stood up and his head bumped the roof. Above a tiny door was the poster Mulder had in the X-Files.

That wasn't right, James decided. “I want to believe,” he read aloud, and as he did he began to shrink in size.

More like it, he decided, then looked at his hands, which looked not just smaller, but younger, childlike. He turned and saw a mirror, and in the mirror... he walked towards it touching his face.

He was eleven again. He looked down at himself, he was dressed in his prep uniform, music, library, team captain, and head boy badges on his lapels, his tie askew. He straightened it. He walked around the room, which did look rather as if it were in a tree, if trees could have caves turned into rooms.

Which they couldn't.

“Curiouser and curiouser,” he said to himself, because he felt it might be compulsory to do so.

There was a long table to the left of him, and on it sat a cake and a beaker with some drink, and a small bottle. The cake was iced with a tiny church, and beaker said disbelief, and the stopper of the bottle labelled 'the solution' was a policemen's helmet.

“I must be dreaming,” he said aloud, and pinched himself. “Or going mad.” Ignoring the offered fare on the table, he would ponder on the choices later, he decided, he pushed open the door.

A yellow brick path spiralled away from the door.

“Now that's just wrong, keep it together Hathaway,” he said, as he began to walk along it, noticing now how his voice was not broken, it was higher, how he now spoke like an eleven year old. He looked down and saw he was wearing his mother's red court shoes. He stopped, he hadn't been walking in heels before, that was for sure.

“A quandary,” said a voice.

“A question,” added an identical one.

“Tweedledee and Tweedledum,” James said, unsurprised now.

“Do you like shoes?”

“What does that mean?”

“Perhaps you like boys?”

“Or mean to be a girl?”

“No! Definitely no gender dysphoria,” James replied. “No inclination to cross-dress either, I have never worn my mother's shoes. My sister did, long after Mum had gone, made Dad cry. I'm happy being male, thank you very much.”

“A big word for a little boy.”

“Indeed, anyone would suppose you some kind of gifted child?”

“Too big for his boots.”

“Too clever by half.”

“Getting ideas above his station.”

“Scholarship brat, swotty spotty Jimmy.”

“Can you please both shut up and let me pass!” James stamped his foot, now clad in a reassuring black brogue of his school shoe.

“Questions, questions, can you answer?” both strange twins asked together. Looking at them now, he realised they looked like short, fat, cartoon, versions of Knox.

“Fine,” he said.

“Boys or girls?”

“Or both?”

“I don't know!” James replied in frustration.

“And what kind of answer is that?”

“No answer at all, if you ask me!”

“I'm only eleven!” James snapped archly. “I don't have to know yet.”

“What about later?”

“What about 26?”

“I choose neither. I choose celibacy.”

“How dull.”

“How lonely.”

“Can I pass now?”

“Catholicism or atheism?”

“Is that such a binary choice? Honestly, I don't know. Yes, I choose God, but maybe not the path I first chose. I love Mass, but so much harm has been done. How can I choose one over the other, I despise both! I chose Love!” he yelled out, opening eyes he didn't remember closing.

Tweedledum and Tweedledee were gone, as was the yellow brick road. Instead he was on a path of black and white through a forest. He strode on, thinking he was perhaps on some kind of chessboard, but the steps were notes, and he realised he was walking on a giant piano. He leapt off, disturbed, into the forest, and ran.

Pianos.

Bloody pianos.

“I'm mad!” he yelled, in despair.

“Or maybe your point of reference is mad. The sanest man may feel mad in a mad world.” James stopped and looked up to where the voice was coming from.

“The Cheshire Cat. Of course. This world is mad, but is also my subconscious, so I must be mad.”

“Or very drunk. You are a very arrogant and egotistical boy to suppose you created this place.”

“I don't claim to have created this place, I'm merely borrowing to from Lewis Carroll.”

“Where are you?”

“Wonderland, I suppose.”

“And where were you?”

“At home. In Oxford.”

“And where are the doors to Wonderland? How did you get here?”

“Through a looking glass.”

“Then if the frame of reference fits the tale, why suppose it is not as real as your Oxford? Does your Oxford not have absurdity and madness? Does it not have pomp and circumstance and ignore reality as much as here?” the Cat smiled, and then disappeared, leaving his smile for a while, before that, too, vanished.

James ran on through the forest, and eventually came to a wall. He climbed in and came into the garden of his Seminary. Or, at least, it looked a little like it. Priests were painting white roses red.

Of course they were. He ran past and found himself on the edge of a croquet lawn, where a group of people he vaguely recognised were playing croquet with flamencos and curled up hedgehogs. His sister, who also appeared to be eleven, was holding a sign that said end animal cruelty, while his father was following the people, doffing a cap he had never owned. Nell was dressed like Alice, his father like a Victorian gardener.

“Off with her head!” yelled a male voice.

The players and his father bowed. “Nell,” his father yelled, “it's the Red King, show some respect.”

“Off with her head!” the Red King approached them and turned out to be the Thirteenth Marquis of Tygon, Augustus Mortmaigne.

“I'm not afraid of you!” Nell yelled at Mortmaigne.

“Oh, little girl, there is not need to be afraid, I love you.”

“I'm going to tell!” she looked at James, appealing, and so did his father, standing up and putting himself in front of his daughter. James ran to his family.

“I'm not afraid of you either!” he shouted. “Do you hear me, I'm not afraid of you!”

“Of course you are,” sneered Mortmaigne. “Why am I not under arrest, DS Hathaway, why have you never told anyone of importance?”

“I'm... I'm not afraid... I'm not!”

“But you're a little boy again, such a pretty little thing, such a clever little thing, too, all those books and music, my little prodigy.”

“Run James!” Nell said, pushing him in the back. “Get out of here! I want to play at being Alice! You always spoil my games!”

James ran, confused, and found himself back in the forest, branches and twigs and ferns closing in as he ran faster and faster into more and more overgrown woodland. 

Panting, out of breath, confused, he eventually burst into a clearing where a long table was laid for tea. A dormouse was curled up in the tea pot and the rabbit sat on the table washing its whiskers. Gone were the waistcoat and pocket watch. It seemed larger, almost luminescent, and watched James with knowing, sad, gentle, eyes. Orchids in vases and bowls were placed at intervals between the plates of teatime treats.

“Ah, my James, just in time for tea,” a man said, turning from a out of place modern barbecue, holding a pot of tea. He was about six foot tall, with short dark hair and bright blue eyes under the battered top hat.

“The Hatter?” James questioned.

“If you like lad,” he spoke with a gentle, barely there, Geordie accent.

“I want to get out of here? How can I get out of here?”

“Are you sure you want to? Don't you need to save you sister?”

“I think Nell is pretty good at saving herself!”

“Bitter, are we, my pet?” the Hatter said archly.

“Maybe. Yes. I'm tired. I'm drunk.”

“Tut tut, and you only eleven.”

“I'm twenty six!”

“My, are you now. Cup of tea then lad?”

“Why not?” James said, sitting at the table. The rabbit looked at him with wise eyes and winked.

“I'm lonely,” the Hatter said, apropos out of thin air. “My wife is dead and I drowned myself. I'm not even here. I'm flying. Drink your tea.”

“I'm sorry for your loss,” James said politely.

“They're all mad here, and they think me mad. Ivory Tower pompous bastards. Are you pompous too?”

“Not like you mean, at least, I don't think so.”

“I like a smart arse myself. If you want to get home, you need to find the yellow brick road.”

“And click my heels three times? Am I in Wonderland or Oz?”

“Perhaps you're in the Land of Dreams, my lad, or maybe Wonderland and Oz border onto each other. Perhaps the Red Queen and the Witch of the West are friends and allies. Or maybe I'm just talking fey nonsense. Drink your tea.”

As James was about to take a sip of his tea, the smile appeared, and then the Cat. “If you find it too mad here, why don't you go back to Cambridge?” he asked from above him, in a tree, then began to fade again.

“Oxford is my home, I think. I never belonged in Cambridge, any more that I did at Moulsford Prep or Radley College. I play-act posh and quote, neither Town or Gown, but I do belong, or I want to. I love the bells of Oxford. And the meadows and parks, the rivers, the buildings, I love the city.”

The Cat popped back into existence. “Doesn't Cambridge have all that?”

“I can't go back to Cambridge, I can't! Too many bad memories!”

But the Cat had already gone.

“Perhaps you need to belong to someone?” suggested the Hatter. “I find I was happiest belonging and being needed. Drink your tea James.”

James did so and felt himself slide into unconsciousness...

When he awoke he was laying on cobbles and Old Tom was ringing out 5 am, followed by the various other college and church bells, each with their own time. James stood up. He seemed to be back to being adult sized, dressed as he had been in his flat, complete with no shoes and only purple fluffy warm bed socks. He was in an alley, Queen's Lane he thought, next to a brick wall. In the wall were two bricked up doors, a normal one, and a tiny one, mouse sized...

A brown mouse was watching him, whiskers twitching. “I suppose that is your door?” he asked, not expecting an answer.

“We both came out of there,” the mouse replied in a adult male voice, leaping into the air and turning into a sparrow and fluttering around his head.

James looked about him further. He was not in his Oxford after all, he decided. Things were slightly off, and then there was...

“I suppose you're my daemon then?” he asked.

The sparrow dived bombed down to his feet and turned into a ginger cat and rubbed around his legs. “I'm Finn, it's lovely to finally talk, to have you see me.”

“I hate his Dark Materials, the anti Narnia! I felt so uncomfortable reading them, especially the last! Really? I suppose you were the rabbit from earlier.”

“Don't be stupid! The Rabbit is not a daemon, and not a rabbit, and not what the Magisterium nor your Church think either!”

James laughed hysterically. “The White Rabbit in Wonderland is not so powerful! No metaphor or allegory there at all!”

“What makes you think that your Rabbit is Wonderland's rabbit? You can be so stupid James!”

“I'm not stupid! And tell me this Finn, if I'm an adult again, why aren't you fixed on one animal? And why are you male?”

“I am what I am, and you know the answer to both James. We came out of that little door, let's try the other one.” Finn leapt forward, turning into a black Labrador to sniff the bricked up normal sized door. James walked up to the door and pushed at the brick work. It seemed to derez like a hologram in a bad sci fi movie.

“Wait!” yelled Finn, turning into a panda.

“What?” James asked.

“You'll never see me again, not even in your imagination, you have no intention of even reading Pullman's books again. Please, can we hug?”

“My special toy as a child was a panda, he kept me safe from the nightmares,” James said slowly. “He's in a box under my bed. With all my war gaming figures.”

“I know,” Finn said. “Hold me.”

James nodded awkwardly and let the large panda hug him, and then his arms came up and he hugged back, holding on tightly.

“Now,” Finn said, and rolled them and they tumbled through the bricks like water running over glass...

It was dark, James felt himself brush through soft furs and assumed it was Finn, and then found himself sitting alone on another woodland floor. A light twinkled through the branches and leaves. It smelt like spring.

“Finn?” he called.

But he was alone.

Again.

He got up and headed for the light, realising as he approached it that it was a lamp.

He knew exactly where he was. He held his breath and waited for Mr. Tumnus. But instead the rabbit from his flat hopped out and sat up and looked at him with wise, knowing, eyes. It seemed even larger than before, and still had discarded the trappings of the white rabbit of the Alice books. James felt that this rabbit would never be late for anything. It looked at the floor and James squatted down. As he did so he realised he was a child again, a much younger one this time, maybe seven, maybe even younger, dressed in cut off jeans and a too big rugby shirt and battered red trainers, hand-me-downs from his cousin, he remembered. 

“Hello, can you tell me what this is about?”

Suddenly the rabbit was no longer there, and instead James was dwarfed by a huge and terrible lion.

The Lion.

“Oh James, my son, you called on me.”

“Did I? I suppose I did. I mean, I often do.”

“Son of Adam, my beloved child, I was with you always, through ever step of your terrible childhood, and I am with you always now. When pushed, you chose Love. So Love I give to you.” Aslan breathed on James and then roared...

James awoke on his kitchen floor, his phone alarm ringing from the bedroom. Stiffly, he stumbled up and hurried awkwardly to this bedroom to shut the noise off. It was five o'clock, he had to get going. He'd been assigned by Innocent to pick up some prodigal Inspector returning from the West Indies.

He spooned a heap of coffee into his cafetière as he put the kettle on, musing it was just a dream, a very strange dream...

Just a dream, he told his reflection as he shaved and brushed his teeth.

Only a dream, he decided as he dressed.

Such a weird dream, but just a dream, he repeated to himself as he forced down scalding coffee.

A comforting but odd dream he told himself over and over as he drove away from the dreaming spires, up Headington Hill, past Brookes University, and out to the A40 and onto the M40. He put the radio on to Classic FM and gave it no more thought as he sped towards the M25 and Heathrow airport.

He parked, got more coffee, swallowed a couple of paracetamol for his hangover and began to make a sign. He saw a nun and gave up his seat for her, thinking about Love.

He waited at the arrivals with his sign, and was stunned to see the spitting image of the Hatter from his dreams walk up to him.

“Are you for me?” Inspector Lewis asked.

**Author's Note:**

> Apologies for not writing so much in this lovely fandom, my health deteriorates, including my mental faculties, and so, if you've noticed me posting more in Doctor Who, it is easier as I loved the show since I was 4 and been writing stories for it since I was 7, and been published in it long ago, so it is less easy to get lost and confused.
> 
> We have a series of DI Hathaway case fics planned, but as my illness progresses and my daughter tries to cope with study and work despite her autism, it isn't going to be as easy as the AU series or the Oxford Ripper was for either of us. Fingers crossed.
> 
> This fic probably shows I'm losing it :p 
> 
> Kind comments greatly appreciated :)


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